Value Triangle

Some time ago I defined my three personal values, which I want to live after. It was some morning I woke up and they were crystal clear to me. I call it my “Value Triangle” as all values need to be present in combination and in a balanced way. Too much of one is not good, too little of the other neither. However to keeping the balance is not always easy.

Family –
Family is extremely important to me. I do have and want to keep a good relationship with my parents and sisters. They play a key role in my life. It is important to me to have regular contact with them be it over phone calls, emails, skype or a visit. I need to know what is going on in their lives, what makes them happy at the moment, what gives them sorrows. I want to congratulate them for their successes and birthdays. I want to be there for them if they need somebody to lean on or only be it to have a bitching session.
This also includes the strong desire to found a family of my own in the near future.

So why do I moved in a different country then, away from my family? Well this is linked to my other two values as you will see. But I try my best to NEVER forget to keep contact, call on their birthdays or be there if possible. That is also why it is extremely important for me to go “home” to my family at least every 5-6 weeks, more often every 4 weeks.

Love –
I cannot imagine a life without love. The love for my family and the love for my partner. Love includes to be fair to people and to acknowledge them. This is why I actively try to say thank you to others often or to acknowledge their small and big successes in another way.
Love also includes the relationships to my partner. A relationship does not stay healthy without work and here I learned a lot from my first love and long-term relationship which I now can actively incorporate in my current one. Respect is the most important thing. If you don’t respect each other as a whole, as the other person is with all strengths and weaknesses you will never ‘absorb’ the other person as a whole. Trust and freedom are important as well. Everybody has its own life, interests, habits… these need space as well and you value time together more and don’t get stuck into day-to-day habits if you spend time apart. Trust for this is a must.
Finally it is important to be close to each other, very close some times where you just lie there skin to skin feeling the warmth of the other person’s body and hearing his heart beating. Show each other that you are in love.

I have been lucky on the second value so far. I feel as if I am ‘arrived’, don’t need to search any more. Two hearts reunited in one soul.

Personal Satisfaction and Happiness-
The first two values are nice. But without this one I could not enjoy and value them as much.
I need to feel satisfied. Sure not every day is like that and I don’t want to be satisfied and happy all year long as there would not be anything to long for anymore. It is more that I care about myself, my body, my health, my soul. I try actively to be good to myself and listen to myself, my inner voice and how I feel. I try to act upon these feelings as much as possible and no against them. Part of this value is my job, where and how I live, my health, my mental balance, sports and my body, stress reduction, relaxation.. .

I am not always happy… I have my downs. But values one and two are my safety net which catches me when I am falling and helping me to reach value three as far as possible.

What are your values?

Shout… Shout - Get it all out

Finally on my way home… too much work today… some time wasted in meetings were people do their little power games and think a monologue is the best way to lead a discussion and treating others as they have no clue or cannot grasp the idea… wasting my time with going through the same thing ten times just for the sake of it and blablabla all the time…
So far about the being professional!? Can’t people leave their personal anger (?) or is it annoyance or disappointment or self-pity or what ever it is they feel because they got negative feedback out of they way for their last weeks on the project..?
Then somebody blocked the printer for half an hour at 19:30 printing a 300 slide presentation 3 times in color… (really needed???) and made me miss my earlier train as I was waiting for charts to be printed which I now had to hang up in the whole building alone, as I could not work on it until late… as I was stuck in these stupid meetings…
ok I was not so much upset taking the later 20:22 train… would be home shortly before 10pm.. but despite all the nice people who asked if they could help with hanging up the charts on their way out of the office… somebody of course needed to make a comment on the numbers.. not right… blabla… told person xyz to change it… blabla… well nobody told me (actually I think the numbers are right)… blabla… and it is not the people who present these statistics who spend twice half a day a week at least just updating all of this sh*** but me… they actually don’t have a clue how this is all populated with extracts and 10 different macros etc…. so this comment made me really angry and I had to calm myself down to not start an argument with this person…. Would not be too professional either… don’t know why this bothers me soo much. I guess because the charts look nice.. but nearly nobody sees the long hours behind them to set it up (20 tab workbook…), update it twice a week with data from 4 different project plans to actually track the status of over 1000 document divided into 11 categories…

Well at least there are some people on the project who really value my work and come to me with questions and understand the big task behind all these pretty charts…

So some more Jack Johnson on the train, some deep breaths and I guess I am fine again… ready to get up tomorrow morning, catch the train to Basel and do some more work…. And yes you might have guessed it… some more work on the statistics ;)

Momentaufnahmen

The chestnut trees at the river Limmat opposite the train station are in full blossom.

Somebody put a can of beer on the post boxes around the corner from where we live.

Marinello took the bright plastic cow from its roof.

Waterdrops sit on the tips of new leaves on the baby banana trees on the sideboard in the living room. They sparkle in the morning sun.

The Milka Maracuja and Hibiscusblüte has a fresh fruity jam like cream inside between two layers of milk and white chocolate.

The woman in the post office put a stamp on my letter which was packed in a cardboard like envelop.

The advertisment on TV is looking for waxing vergins ?! and the M&Ms are called M&Ms because there is a M printed on each of them.

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Moments come and go... How many small, "unimportant" details will you remember?

Tipping points?

I believe in destiny and that everything which happens has some sense behind it.

When I was ill a view weeks ago I checked out job adds on the internet and came accross a job in strategic planning / management in Zurich which was just written for me. It would be the mixture of developing strategic planning / management tools, supporting all company areas in this, doing studies and presentations. So a mixture of what I like, analystics, thinking, excel sheets AND working with people in workshops, trainings etc.

Well, as I came to the conclusion that I like my current job (or better project) at the moment, but don´t see myself there for longer than 1-2 years due to several reasons, the job add really attracted my attention. But I told myself... you cannot change job after 9 months bla bla bla...

Just before I checked out job adds again... the job is newly advertised... so still open

Coincidence or destiny?

I call them up tomorrow to ask some questions on it and will apply (I only have a notice period of 1 month..) ... my gut feelings tell me to do so...

might this be a tipping point?

Always on the move

Always on the move time passes by quickly. Day after day, week after week. The cold winter days have gone and made space for sparkles of sun and mild winds. Nature woke up and blossoms. Rich green leaves and flowers enlighten our days.



There is a small park between the Basel train station and Aeschenplatz where I work. There are trees, bushes, some benches, a fountain. Cars passing by on both sides. But it is still like a little realm in the city. I have seen this park changing since I first walked through.

Ice and snow, wet and mud. Suddenly the first grass carefully shows its heads in the spring sun, birds start to welcome me in the morning with their songs and slowly crocus, tulips and snowdrops accompany my way. The smell of the park changed as well. The fresh morning air turned milder and encompasses the smell of blossoming lilac.

Always on the move time passes quickly.
Maybe one day I stop and sit down on one of the benches.